WaterNow Alliance

Water Leaders. Resilient Solutions.

Model and Strategy

WaterNow Alliance is a national network for local water leaders and decision makers that is advancing transformation in the urban water sector to accelerate widespread adoption of equitable, climate resilient and environmentally sustainable water management strategies.

As WaterNow sees it, changing how cities, towns, and urban water utilities think about and finance water infrastructure is a critical pathway to water resilience across the U.S. and particularly in the West. To this end, WaterNow promotes major investments in distributed infrastructure: onsite and decentralized water management strategies spread across communities. These solutions include stormwater capture, advanced onsite reuse, graywater systems, water-wise and climate appropriate landscaping, water efficient commercial and industrial processes, irrigation and leak detection tech, and more.

The primary challenges to implementing innovative distributed infrastructure at scale are money and policy. WaterNow addresses these issues by supporting public utilities to access capital markets and secure Federal and state funding to invest in onsite, decentralized water strategies and infrastructure across their communities, and by clearing key policy pathways at Federal, state, and local levels. WaterNow’s priorities in this area include:

  • Normalize the concept among urban water providers that water infrastructure includes nature-based and other decentralized strategies, and eliminate barriers to investments in these strategies for local water providers.
  • Increase and accelerate utility spending in these areas, taking advantage of new Federal funding available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other recent enactments.
  • Build a portfolio of successful demonstration projects highlighting the viability and benefits of onsite strategies, to grow political will.
  • Develop a new generation of diverse utility leadership with the vision to embrace new models and build culture change in the sector.
To operationalize these priorities, WaterNow:

  • Provides technical assistance to cities and utilities around navigating and applying for various parts of Federal and state infrastructure funding.
  • Provides capacity and expertise to communities on the ground to implement environmentally sustainable, affordable, climate resilient water initiatives.
  • Develops policy pathways, research and resources for communities and leaders to take action.
  • Conducts outreach and education programs to socialize these ideas.
  • Co-lead the Transformational Water Leadership Academy, a training program for diverse water utility professionals.

Impact

“The change we hope to see is communities investing in innovative onsite water strategies in the same ways, and with the same sources of capital, that they're investing today in much less resilient, conventional water infrastructure.” - Cynthia Koehler, Executive Director

Transforming the urban water sector is critical to protecting and sustaining freshwater ecosystems in the Western U.S., as well as ensuring safe and affordable drinking water supplies for everyone. Onsite, decentralized water management strategies have the capacity to permanently reduce water demand by millions of acre feet each year while addressing local environmental justice issues and creating value for all water stakeholders. Since 2015 – and with the help of an early Battery Powered grant – WaterNow Alliance has helped catalyze change at the policy level including:

  • Successfully campaigned the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (the national organization that sets accounting standards for cities and public entities) to issue a ruling that opened doors for utilities nationwide to have access for the first time to the bond market for onsite decentralized water infrastructure.
  • Adopting recommendations provided by WaterNow, California’s 2018 Water Plan Update for the first time identified local municipal bonds as a financing option that would enhance opportunities for local governments and water agencies to maximize their access to State-administered water infrastructure funding.
  • Per public comments WaterNow and partners submitted to the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), CWCB elevated revenue bonds, environmental impact bonds, and State Revolving Fund Loans for water conservation and other decentralized strategies as a key solution set in the 2023 Colorado Water Plan Update.

WaterNow's Project Accelerator has supported 31 communities over the past 5 years with on-the-ground direct technical assistance to jumpstart and implement local sustainable water priority projects, many in partnership with others, including:

  • Developed Colorado’s first ever municipal graywater ordinance, in the city of Golden
  • Crafted a data-driven analysis on the effectiveness of the city’s water reuse and efficiency offerings to drive greater investment in the best of these.
  • Developed and supported enactment of water efficient landscape ordinances in Moab, UT and Broomfield, CO to center efficient water use in land use decisions.
  • Through its Help Desk, supported dozens of under-resourced Western communities to successfully apply for and leverage millions in Federal grants.

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Leadership

  • Cynthia

    Cynthia Koehler

    Executive Director

  • Caroline

    Caroline Koch

    Water Policy Director

  • Amy

    Amy Weinfurter

    Director of Strategic Projects